Space, Stars, and the Beginning of Time: What the Hubble Telescope Saw

[1]

I have never been one to watch the stars and find constellations. I could pick out the Big and Little Dippers, find the North Star and a couple of planets but that was about it. One night my neighbor knocked on my door and invited me outside to see the International Space Station pass overhead on its earthly orbit. On another evening, he taught me how to see the moons around Jupiter with my binoculars. Then I turned them on the full moon and saw the mountains and craters in a clarity I had never dreamed of before. I didn't know how much I could see with ordinary binoculars. Now I am a fan of the sky and I am fascinated by what astronomers arelearning about the origin of the universe through telescopes.

The best of these, the Hubble Space Telescope, has been called one of thegreatest scientific instruments of all time. Launched on April 24, 1990, the Hubble orbits the earth once every 97 minutes taking pictures of deep space. The information the Hubble has returned to scientists on earth each week is enough to fill a 3,600-foot-long bookshelf. That is the length of ten football fields put together end to end!